Cata and MoP had just as much leveling as Wrath and TBC, just in half the levels. The levels were twice as 'long'.

No...no they weren't. That is what they told us and wanted us to believe so they could get away with less leveling content. I can tell you from personal experience I lvl capped faster during the 5 lvl xpacs than I did with the 10 lvl ones. It wasn't twice as fast, but it was definitely faster. Hell I even specifically remember hitting 81 and 82 and thinking I never would have hit 2 and 4 more lvls respectively in that amount of time.

No...no they weren't. That is what they told us and wanted us to believe so they could get away with less leveling content. I can tell you from personal experience I lvl capped faster during the 5 lvl xpacs than I did with the 10 lvl ones. It wasn't twice as fast, but it was definitely faster. Hell I even specifically remember hitting 81 and 82 and thinking I never would have hit 2 and 4 more lvls respectively in that amount of time.

This is what morhaime said at the time of CAT:

"We've gotten a lot of feedback from players that don't necessarily like it when an expansion comes out and they feel that they have to level up to the new max level as quickly as possible and then go back to their endgame activities. There are players out there who enjoy the level up experience, but by no means is it all of our players."

The decision all comes down to the goals of the expansion. With a brand new 1-60 experience on hand, the team really didn't need to put the endgame that much further out of reach for the influx of new Goblin and Worgen characters.

"In this case, we're trying to better balance the time and development effort we put into the different areas of the game. We're trying to make sure we get a little bit more endgame content while still appeasing the level up crowd with five more levels."

Now with level 90 boost, and no new classes and races, they feel that more leveling will be what the players want. That is why they are doing it. Honestly I'm not so sure they are right, because I'm one of those people who doesn't like questing for long periods, been done and so boring. Things can change though. I will wait and see.

Now with level 90 boost, and no new classes and races, they feel that more leveling will be what the players want. That is why they are doing it.

That wasn't what I was referring to... When Cata was in beta there were several threads addressing the concern that we were only getting 5 lvls instead of 10 and multiple times the blues stated it was twice the experience with 5 so it would still feel like 10.

That wasn't what I was referring to... When Cata was in beta there were several threads addressing the concern that we were only getting 5 lvls instead of 10 and multiple times the blues stated it was twice the experience with 5 so it would still feel like 10.

It wasn't.

Well, technically there was some truth to it. Look at the original XP you had to get to level when CAT first came out, it shows that they did increase the total amount to level, but then they nerfed it later because people actually complained it took too long. Also they buffed all mob health so it took longer to kill things. But also they added things like xp for mining and herbing, xp for arch, and even leveling through pvp. Eventually as time went on, because of that need to get alts to 85, it became the easiest expansion to level through. But to dismiss the fact that they actually did balance it to make it so 80-81 took about as many XP points as 80-82 would have... that would be a mistake. They did do that.

Here is my actual experience: BC took me 1 week to level through, all questing. WOTLK took me 3 days to level through, we ran mostly dungeons. Cataclysm took me 3 days to level through, but I mined my way to 82 the first day. This was all in the first week of release, not from after it was nerfed later or something. I'm not the fastest leveler, but I'm not the slowest either.

Also: MOP was only 5 levels but took me 4 days, which surprised me, it seemed to me that they realized that leveling in CAT ended up being too fast.